Breaking down borders in video games.
Ronia Shepard
Ronia Shepard, a headshot.
My Commander Shepard?
My Commander Shepard is known for resilience. People whisper the word Akuze around her, and know she has what it takes.
Between her knowledge of technology and engineering and use of the sniper rifle, she exudes patience. She is meticulous. She is careful. She is intelligent.
And she knows what she represents. A first.
My Commander Shepard can not make mistakes without scrutiny. This is why she gets the job done, but not at all costs. She realizes the stakes of the situation are too high to lose her own humanity in the process.
She finds interaction with the other races of the universes enlightening and daunting. She chokes back anger at what was done to the Krogan, looking back in the past of Earth to see the residual scars that marred humanity’s progress for so long. As she enters the Citadel, she is not sure she can endorse their hierarchical structure that excludes by default, realizing that a government that does not fully represent cannot rule in a manner that keeps equality in mind.
My Commander Shepard? She is fighting for understanding between humans and the rest of the galaxy.
This is a series of posts seeking to highlight the various Commanders Shepard of the Mass Effect universe, and make sure people don’t forget that not everyone plays a default white male option that looks like every other space marine out there. Inspiration from Arie Salih.
Related posts:
- Wrex and the Art of the Privilege Check I’ve written a lot about Mass Effect previously, including a...
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| Print article | This entry was posted by Denis Farr on January 10, 2010 at 4:01 pm, and is filed under Console Games, General Gaming, PC Games. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site. |
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Wrex and the Art of the Privilege Check
about 8 months ago - 59 comments
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about 6 months ago
My Commander Shepard looks like Chuck Norris. He he he.
With that said, I think this is a wonderful new feature. The characters people create in rpg’s can tell a lot about that person and it’s interesting to see what other people do with character creation. It would also be interesting to see this for people’s Dragon Age characters as well. Just a thought.
about 6 months ago
I’d still find that more interesting than the bland, shaved, ‘typical’ white male marine. This series is open to everyone further exploring their Shepard, and walking away from the ‘canon’ one.
Dragon Age would be great, though I’d like more people to play it first. This game was great because of its sequel on the horizon, and EA’s insistence of only using one image for Shepard.
Hopefully they don’t do the same for Dragon Age, but it would be fun to see as whom we play overall–I agree.
about 6 months ago
I agree completely. A gameplay trailer is one thing, but I do not like how EA has canonized Commander Shepard’s appearence in cutscene trailers and merchandise. Granted, you kind of have to decide on an appearance for him if you are doing a comic book, for example. However, EA has consistently gone with the default Shepard when it wasn’t necessary. Most of the promotional material for the first game had the other characters on it.
about 6 months ago
My favorite thing about my Shepard was her voice. Which, since there was only one, was every female Shepard’s voice. I loved it. It was low and no-nonsense and not at all ‘sexy’, exactly like I imagined her to be. It’s the best female voice-acting job in any of the games I’ve played at least. It sounded exactly right for someone in the military who was just doing her job and used to commanding other people.
It’s funny, though, I tend to get much more attached to my characters in Bethesda games than Bioware ones. Mostly because Bioware drives you along through the story, and in Oblivion and Fallout I spent vast vast amounts of time decorating my house and picking flowers and just looking at everything. I feel I get to know my character better in open worlds, or am forced to develop for myself more of an idea of her because the story doesn’t do much for me.
about 6 months ago
Yes, definitely finding Hale’s voice acting superior to her male counterpart’s.
As for Bethesda, I think that’s because we’re invited to tailor our characters more than our world in those games. I can’t tell you the plot of any Bethesda Elder Scrolls game because I don’t care for ‘em. BioWare gets me with most of their companions, however. Which acts as a better foil than the story in most of these games.
Agreed about making up my own stories in Bethesda games because of their lack of building them. Bethesda is better at creating worlds I inhabit.
about 6 months ago
I love this series. I just love it.
about 6 months ago
Excellent! We thought it was too good an idea to pass up.
about 6 months ago
That are very nice to read what other peopel make out of rpgs charcters and how they play them. On the other hand i see it even more clearly what irirtate me during my MassEffect playthrough. “Shepard” – why it has to be another english name for main character, this anglocentric trend in games is getting on my nerves .
about 6 months ago
I’ll admit that I’m still playing the game (my first time), and was rather surprised to learn that Europe made the first moves out in space according to the codex pages, and that China was a strongly felt presence. The game didn’t erase nationality in its codices, but it does appear to have made a large effort in the game itself. The only exception (Ashley Williams is quite clearly American), is Kaidan, which is apparently a Japanese game, and his mother was downwind of a transport crash in Singapore, which led to his biotic talents.
I imagine they used that name to very obliquely state Shepard’s role in the party, though they could have easily done it with many other languages (as with Kaidan).
about 5 months ago
Wow, Kaidan’s Japanese? Lol, I don’t know why but I thought he was hispanic. I knew he wasn’t white though.
about 6 months ago
What an awesome idea for a series of articles. I didn’t play mass effect yet, but it’s great to hear that some RPGs still have the flexibility to really let you guide your character.
I hope some more people will post their Shepards in the comment thread here!